North Macedonia

North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe bordered by Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo and Serbia, constituting roughly the northern third of the larger geographical region of Macedonia, with Skopje as its capital and largest city, home to a quarter of its population of over 1.83 million, mostly ethnic Macedonians alongside a significant Albanian minority of around 25 percent. The area was subjugated by the Persian Empire in the late sixth century BC before being incorporated into the kingdom of Macedonia, then Rome's province of Macedonia, and later passed through Byzantine, Serbian Empire and Ottoman rule from the late fourteenth century until the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913 brought it under Serbian rule. It became a constituent state of communist Yugoslavia in 1945 and seceded peacefully in 1991, joining the United Nations in 1993. North Macedonia is a member of NATO, the Council of Europe, the World Bank, and has been a European Union candidate since 2005; it is an upper-middle-income country ranked 68th on the Human Development Index, providing social security, universal health care and free primary and secondary education.